Women’s Suicide and the Massacre of Mamasani Forces under Mohammad Shah Qajar: A Durkheimian Analysis

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Political Attitudes II (Table 19)

Abstract

This study focuses on the suicides of Mamasani women in the Gol and Golab castles in Khuzestan, and the massacre of Mamasani forces in Shiraz during Mohammad Shah's ascension to power (1833-1836). The study aims to explore how political violence, local power struggles, and community factors contributed to the suicides of Mamasani women through the lens of Durkheim's typology of suicide. The study is qualitative, employing a method of directed content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted during two field visits (2020-2022). The study participants consisted of 12 individuals selected through purposive sampling to saturation, including relatives of the women who had committed suicide and residents of Golab villages 1 and 2. The study found that the suicides resulted from the interaction between moral pressure related to chastity and honor, strong social cohesion and attachment to custom, and political conditions characterized by insecurity, interference, and power struggles among the elite. The indirect conditions of harassment, lootings, occupation of local strongholds, lack of forces and supplies, and forced displacement also contributed to the suicides. The study found that the suicides were an example of altruistic-anomic suicide, which occurs when collective obligations combine with anomic conditions to make self-destruction appear to be a means of self-protection. The massacre of Mamasani forces was related to the pressure of local leadership, captivity of relatives, exile, and lethal deprivation through thirst and hunger in a rapidly shifting frontier region.

Author

• Vahid Jadidi, University of Notre Dame